When a murder is committed, a lady's companion finds herself in the role of amateur sleuth...1789, London: When Emily Fanshawe, Marchioness of Polbrook, is found strangled in her bedchamber, suspicion immediately falls on those residing in the grand house in Hanover Square. Emily's husband - Randal Fanshawe, Lord Polbrook - fled in the night and is chief suspect - much to the dismay of his family. Ottilia Draycott is brought in as the new lady's companion to Sybilla, Dowager Marchioness, and soon finds herself assisting younger son Lord Francis Fanshawe in his investigations.

The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. He does not suffer fools gladly. So when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back. As their war of words escalates, London's most popular satirical cartoonist, A. J. Quill, skewers them both.

England, 1920. Eleanor Swift has spent the last few years travelling the world: taking tea in China, tasting alligators in Peru, escaping bandits in Persia and she has just arrived in England after a chaotic 45-day flight from South Africa. Chipstone is about the sleepiest town you could have the misfortune to meet. But then, from the edge of a quarry, through the driving rain, Eleanor is shocked to see a man shot and killed in the distance. Before she can climb down to the spot, the villain is gone and the body has vanished.

The daughter of a baronet and minor heiress, Rosalind Thorne was nearly ruined after her father abandoned the family. To survive in the only world she knew, she began to manage the affairs of some of London society's most influential women, who rely on her wit and discretion. So when artistocratic wastrel Jasper Aimesworth is found dead in London's most exclusive ballroom, Almack's, Rosalind must use her skills and connections to uncover the killer.

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.

Twenty-six-year-old Beatrice Hyde-Clare is far too shy to investigate the suspicious death of a fellow guest in the Lake District. A spinster who lives on the sufferance of her relatives, she would certainly not presume to search the rooms of her host's son and his friend looking for evidence. Reared in the twin virtues of deference and docility, she would absolutely never think to question the imperious Duke of Kesgrave about anything, let alone how he chose to represent the incident to the local constable. And yet that's exactly what she does.

June 1933. Independent, young Kitty Underhay has been left in charge of her family’s hotel, The Dolphin, on the tranquil English coast. But when several rooms are broken into and searched, including Kitty’s own, she quickly realizes that something out of the ordinary is afoot at the hotel. Soon, rumors are flying in the cozy town that someone is on the hunt for a stolen ruby. A ruby that Kitty’s mother may well have possessed when she herself went missing during the Great War.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

Following the death of her husband, Lady Darby has taken refuge at her sister's estate, finding solace in her passion for painting. But when one of the house guests is murdered, her brother-in-law asks her to aid the insufferable Sebastian Gage - a fellow guest with some experience as an inquiry agent. While Gage is clearly more competent than she first assumed, Kiera isn't about to let her guard down, as accusations and rumors swirl.

As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry - and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

December 1899. After the death of her beloved grandmother, Cleopatra Fox moves into the luxury hotel owned by her estranged uncle in the hopes of putting hardship and loneliness behind her. But the poisoning of a guest on Christmas eve throws her new life, and the hotel, into chaos. Cleo quickly realizes no one can be trusted, not Scotland Yard and especially not the hotel’s charming assistant manager.

England. 1923. After a year away at finishing school where she learned etiquette, deportment, and the difference between a fish fork and a salad one, Kitty Worthington is eager to return home. But minutes after she and her brother Ned board the Golden Arrow, the unthinkable happens. A woman with a mysterious connection to her brother is poisoned, and the murderer can only be someone aboard the train. When Scotland Yard hones on Ned as the main suspect, Kitty sets out to investigate.

Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. These ominous words, slashed from the pages of a book of Psalms, are the last threat that the darling of London society, Sir Edward Grey, receives from his killer. Before he can show them to Nicholas Brisbane, the private inquiry agent he has retained for his protection, Sir Edward collapses and dies at his London home, in the presence of his wife, Julia, and a roomful of dinner guests.

Graham, Lord Blakemore, was believed to be lost at sea as a boy. While his mother, Lady Agatha, has never given up hope of finding her son again, others - eager for the title and the wealth that accompanies it - have been conspiring to have him declared dead against Lady Agatha's wishes. Her only ally in the house is her late husband's ward, Miss Beatrice Marlowe. But when a dark-haired stranger arrives on their doorstep claiming to be the lost heir to Castle Black, the plots and schemes of those who would have the castle for themselves take a dark and even more sinister turn.

England, 1865: Newspaper columnist Lady Katherine Bascomb finds herself the subject of speculation when her latest article leads to an arrest in the murders plaguing London. The English believe women ought not to write about such vulgar things as crime, and a particularly attractive detective inspector is incensed that she's interfered with his investigation. To escape her sudden notoriety, Katherine heads to the country - only to witness a murder upon her arrival.

Pride and patriotism lend fervor to greed and cruelty, and Fitzwilliam Darcy is caught at the centre of a decades-old international feud. Taken far from England, presumed dead by his family, and lost to all he holds dear, only one name remains as his beacon in the darkness: Elizabeth. Georgiana Darcy is now the heartbroken heiress to Pemberley, and Colonel Fitzwilliam her bewildered guardian. Vulnerable and unprepared, Georgiana desperately longs for a friend, while Fitzwilliam seeks to protect her from his own family.

Just as Mr. Darcy finally decides to propose to the enticing Miss Elizabeth Bennet, she is summoned to Falmouth, to meet a relation she never knew she had. Thus, the ill-starred Hunsford proposal is avoided - but before he could even begin to understand his luck, adverse circumstances hasten to conspire against him, and Fitzwilliam Darcy is compelled to follow the woman he loves to the far reaches of Cornwall, into a world of deceit and peril, where few - if any - are what they seem to be...

John Thornton is a man of heavy responsibilities who has many things on his mind, but the most troublesome of them all is Margaret Hale. She wants nothing to do with him, and he wishes he could feel the same. When a moment of vulnerability allows her a glimpse into his heart, she begins to see him very differently.

Nell Anslowe and Julian, Earl of Wyndham, are an unlikely couple in every respect. Injured in a riding accident ten years ago, Nell was left with a fiance who abandoned their engagement and the firm belief that she will never marry. The abrupt end of Julian's unhappy marriage formed his resolve to remain a bachelor until the end of his days.

Ripped from her dying mother's arms, Morgana Fowler was cast into a life of desperate thievery. With a tongue even sharper than the blade she deftly wields, she has all but mastered her devious trade - until she picks the pocket of a dashing American who wrests her from the sordid streets of London. In the arms of her gallant protector, she is helpless against the longing he elicits within her.

His proposal of marriage to the lovely, but socially inferior, Elizabeth Bennet thoroughly rejected, Darcy must come to terms with her evaluation of his character and a future without her.

The last thing Lord Nicholas Kincaid expected to see in the gloom of a London tavern was a vision of loveliness. And when she led him to a bedchamber with a come-hither smile, there was no question of resisting - until he realized the lying wench meant to render him senseless so the landlord could rob him blind!

In the year 1780, Harriet Westerman, the willful mistress of a country manor in Sussex, finds a dead man on her grounds with a ring bearing the crest of Thornleigh Hall in his pocket. Not one to be bound by convention or to shy away from adventure, she recruits a reclusive local anatomist named Gabriel Crowther to help her find the murderer, and historical suspense's newest investigative duo is born.

When scholarly Miss Ivy Wareham receives word that she's one of four young ladies who have inherited Lady Celeste Beauchamp's estate with a magnificent private library, she packs her trunks straightaway. Unfortunately, Lady Celeste's nephew, the rakish Quill Beauchamp, Marquess of Kerr, is determined to interrupt her studies one way or another.... Bequeathing Beauchamp House to four bluestockings - no matter how lovely they are to look at - is a travesty, and Quill simply won't have it.

The much-feared and hated Eudo - the Lord Bishop of Winchester's clerk - is bludgeoned to death in Pershore Abbey and laid before the altar in the attitude of a penitent. Everyone who had contact with him had reason to dislike him, but who had reason to kill him? The Sheriff of Worcestershire's thief taker, wily Serjeant Catchpoll, and his new and unwanted superior, Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote, have to find the answer. And as the walls of the abbey close in on the suspects, the killer strikes again....

Though Darcy struggles privately with his desire for Elizabeth Bennet, he must still fulfill his roles as landlord, master, brother, and friend. In Book Two, the "silent time" of Austen's novel, Fitzwilliam Darcy and his personal world emerge as he deals with his servants, including a valet with aspirations of sartorial triumph.

The year is 1838, and seventeen-year-old Julia Elliston's position has never been more fragile. Orphaned and unmarried in a time when women are legal property of their fathers, husbands, and guardians, she finds herself at the mercy of an anonymous guardian who plans to establish her as a servant in far-off Scotland. With two months to devise a better plan, Julia's first choice - to marry her childhood sweetheart - is denied. Then, a titled dowager offers to introduce Julia into society, opening a realm of possibilities.

Beatrice Poole may be a vicar's daughter, but that doesn't mean she's a stranger to the darker passions. Indeed, she knows enough about gothic terrors to have carved out a highly successful career penning "horrid novels." But now the talented authoress finds herself in the midst of an ominous adventure that rivals anything she's ever written.Her beloved Uncle Reggie is dead, Beatrice suspects that he was murdered - all because of his keen interest in a fabled treasure that may not even exist. Rumors abound that the Forbidden Rings of Aphrodite, said to give their possessor the most unnatural powers, have surfaced in London. Yet Beatrice needs more than rumors to uncover the truth. That's why she's braved the wilds of Devon to seek out a leading authority on antiquities and ancient legends: The famously eccentric, unquestionably reclusive, possibly dangerous Earl of Monkcrest, a man believed to dabble in the supernatural.But bearding the Mad Monk of Monkcrest in his den and dangling the possibility of uncovering a fabulous artifact before him may be the biggest mistake of Beatrice's life. For suddenly, she finds herself joined in an uneasy alliance with a man who is every bit as fascinating as one of the heroes in her novels.

Lady Marian Lawrence is in London to snare a rich husband to save her family from ruin - a difficult task given her biting wit and lack of beauty. Hiding her true self, Marian is about to win the wealthy and amiable Lord Darley - until the detestable Reginald Montague blocks their path to the altar. Reginald Montague has vowed to never marry and is determined to keep his bestfriend Darley from being snared by a fortune hunter.

Orphaned at young ages, Lady Katherine Ashton and her brother have spent most of their lives on the high seas, seeking to restore their family fortune through somewhat dubious means. After that kind of adventure, Kate knows, she won't ever be accepted as a proper society lady. To the annoyingly clever, temptingly handsome, and altogether troublesome Earl of Wynbrook, society ladies are a dead bore. Kate, on the other hand, is scandalous, alluring, and altogether fascinating.